through the gardens this time, and saw no sign of me;—­but now my heart beat so thickly, when I thought of him passing me in the dance, that, could I sit there still, I feared ’twould of itself betray me, and that warned me to question if the hour were not ready for the dances, and I rose and stole to the piano and sat awaiting my mother’s word.  But scarcely was I there when one came quietly behind me, and a head bent and almost swept my shoulder; then he stood with folded arms.

“And how long shall I wait for your greeting?  Have you no welcome for me, Ailie?”

“Yes, indeed, Sir Angus,” I replied; but I did not turn my head, for as yet he saw only the back of me, fair and graceful perchance, as when he liked it.

He checked himself in some word.

“Well, then,” he said, “give it me, tell it me, look it me!”

I rose from my seat and shifted the piece of music before me,—­turned and gazed into his eyes one long breathing-space, then I let the lids fall,—­waited a minute so,—­and turned back ere my lip should be all in a quiver,—­but not till his head bent once more, and a kiss had fallen on those lids and lain there cool and soft as a pearl,—­a pearl that seemed to sink and penetrate and melt inwardly and dissolve and fill my brain with a white blinding light of joy.  ’Twas but a brief bit of the great eternities;—­and then I found my fingers playing I knew not how, and heard the dancers’ feet falling to the tune of I knew not what.

While I played there, Margray sat beside me, for the merriment was without now, on the polished oak-floor of the hall, and they being few but familiars who had the freedom of the house, (and among whom I had had no need but to slip with a nod and smile ere gaining my seat,) she took out her needle and set a stitch or two, more, perhaps, to cover her being there at all than for any need of industry; for Margray loved company, and her year of widowhood being not yet doubled, and my mother unwilling that she should entertain or go out, she made the most of that at our house; for Mrs. Strathsay had due regard of decency,—­forbye she deemed it but a bad lookout for her girls, if the one of them danced on her good-man’s grave.

“I doubt will Sir Angus bide here,” said Margray at length; for though all his boyhood she had called him by every diminutive his name could bear, the title was a sweet morsel in her unaccustomed mouth, and she kept rolling it now under her tongue.  “Mrs. Strathsay besought him, but his traps and his man were at the inn.  Sir Angus is not the lad he was,—­a young man wants his freedom, my mother should remember.”

And as her murmur continued, my thoughts came about me.  They were like birds in the hall; and all their voices and laughter rising above the jingle of the keys, I doubted was he so sorry for me, after all.  Then the dancing broke, I found, though I still played on, and it was some frolicsome game of forfeits, and Angus was chasing Effie, and with her light step and her flying laugh it was like the wind following a rose-flake.  Anon he ceased, and stood silent and statelier than Mrs. Strathsay’s self, looking on.